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Reed Bergman of Playbook, Inc, likes to tell a story about a famous sports broadcaster, when after leaving work one afternoon, was asked a College Basketball tournament question on Twitter about the Big 10 conference. The broadcaster, multi-tasking as usual, quickly responded, “I think the 10 teams will do… ”. Within seconds, his whole career was called into question given that he appeared not to know that there are 12 teams in the Big 10 not 10.

Bergman’s job is to help sports personalities and athletes create playbooks (blueprints for career goals). Part of that playbook advises his clients on how to avoid embarrassing situations and other parts involve connecting the sports star with brands. Bergman believes that every sports professional should have their own playbook in order to keep them out of trouble and to create more wealth building opportunities.

For me, I believe anyone involved in sports marketing (athlete, brand, agency, etc.) needs to re-examine their own playbooks, because the rules are being re-written and the playing field has changed. Each party in a marketing campaign has new responsibilities and new challenges. In the digital age, the playing field is constantly changing, it might be a football field on day one, but a tennis court the next.

Whatever evolution you need to make has to be digital and creative in order for it to be interesting and catch the most people’s attention. In the past, customers valued and rewarded brands who would use athletes as pitchmen on TV, print ads or in-person appearances. That’s no longer the case – they now want experiences (through interactive campaigns) that demonstrate value and increasingly, people will want closer relationships with the brand to establish higher levels of trust.

To me, that means the playbook needs to change. A playbook that all parties involved must follow to have a successful outcome. An agile playbook that can be rewritten quickly to accommodate new circumstances.

Here are the steps to create that new marketing campaign playbook for brands, agencies and sports professionals:

Step 1: Create a sense of urgency around the objectives

This step may sound obvious, but I’ve seen too many companies, agencies and athletes skip this important step and pay for it later. Smart brands and agencies understand how to create urgency around their campaign objectives. Recognize that urgency is a mindset and not a process.

Agree on objectives: Don’t just dictate to the athlete what the objectives are bring them into the process so that they understand what’s expected and when. We also like to ask for their input in case they have better ideas than we do.

Use an online project management tool: We recognize that most athletes and sports professionals are not going to use a project management system, but their managers and handlers will. Sports campaigns in the digital age need visibility by all parties, and we use Basecamp to facilitate it.

Create an outcome oriented atmosphere: Sure completing tasks are great, but ultimately results are what determines a successful from unsuccessful campaign. Get all parties focused on delivering results and allow some flexibility in the plan to allow that to happen.

Weekly check in meetings: These 1 hour or less meetings are designed to update the team and to assess whether the urgency within the team is there and that tasks are being done on time.

You’ve heard about creating brand stories but did you realize each campaign needs a story as well? Yes, each campaign needs an overall story complete with twists and turns and unexpected endings. If you choose the story wisely, you’ll end up with a hit that captivates your intended audience and brings in revenue.

It’s important to mention that the campaign story must tie in the brand initiatives and create an emotional response from the brand’s audience (with Sports this step is easy). That means aligning the objectives in step 1 with the interests of the brand’s target markets. Dorie Clark’s book, Stand Out is a great resource to help individuals and companies do this and more.

For example, Burger King’s #WatchLikeAKing campaign they created a story around the plight of an office worker during March Madness. They also usedsports influencer platform Thuzio to book 13 NCAA basketball legends with large followings to help with promoting the campaign on Twitter because they best matched their target audience. The campaign resonated so well, that they became the most mentioned corporate sponsor for last year’s series.

Step 3: Create a clear action plan

Once the objectives and story line are in place, it’s time to lay out all of the tasks on a calendar or project timeline. As I mentioned earlier, we use Basecamp for project management, but occasionally we’ll use this sports marketing campaign calendar template to run campaigns. We use both Basecamp and the campaign calendar to review the campaign each week during our meetings.

Each of the tasks must be clearly laid out with expected outcomes. All campaign team members, and especially the athlete or athlete’s representative, should have some system in place to remind them of when tasks are due. I’ve seen too many of the campaigns fall of the tracks because sports professionals missed a campaign deadline.

Step 4: Use the integrated marketing approach

Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose. If you’re not repurposing the campaign content across multiple channels you’re missing a huge opportunity. As an example, let’s say you’ve hired an athlete to create a series of skateboard videos related to a product you’re selling. You can also post snippets of those videos on Instagram and Vine, add video stills to Snapchat and create gifs (animated images) to share on Twitter and email (yes gifs work in email).

Moreover, if your campaign isn’t integrated across all relevant distribution channels (i.e. each traditional and social channels your target audience is using) you’re campaign is going to fall flat. Each channel should endeavor to link or support the other channels for maximum impact.

Important point, make sure there is always a relevant call to action that aligns with the campaign objectives.

Step 5: Generate and celebrate short term wins

Campaigns, especially expensive ones, can be stressful. There’s usually a lot at stake within the brand – reputations, high executive expectations, political capital that has been spent – so early wins are critical to reducing the stress and getting CFOs off the marketer’s backs.

Build in some no-brainer, early wins. For example, have the athlete run a contest on Twitter and Instagram where they sign their favorite tweets and images for an hour. The autographed content will then be mailed to the recipient once the recipient sends the brand their name, email address and physical address. Of course, the tweets and images tie into the campaign hashtag, but the athlete’s fans will be more than happy to oblige for a chance to get their favorite athlete’s autograph.

Step 6: Always be measuring

Yes, it’s still hard to measure the ROI for specific campaigns. There’s a lot of unconnected infrastructure that’s needed to link one top of funnel impression to the sale of the product or service. Still, you must try.

For measuring the outcomes on social channels, Facebook is best, followed by Twitter, Pinterest, Instragram, Vine and Snapchat. Email remains the easiest channel to measure (the infrastructure is most mature), and micro-site landing pages and website content are easy to track performance as well.

The critical goal in this step is to ensure that everything the athlete is doing for the campaign has an associated, traceable metric. That means using things like bit.ly short links, tracking pixels on microsite landing pages, and hashtags for everything else. While not completely accurate, each of these will give you some indication of how each individual athlete is performing and how the overall campaign is performing.

Step 7: Keep engaging long after the campaign is over

For most brands, the campaign ends after the athletes’ disengage. But don’t let this happen to you. Some of our best results have come after the campaign is over. How? Remember those tracking pixels from step 6? Those can be used to retarget campaign recipients on Facebook and all over the web. Those ads that seem to follow you around pop up because you’re being tracked by little pieces of code on your browser. Use retargeting to bring those that haven’t purchased back to your website.

The same holds true for email. Whether you’re a B2B or B2C company, we recommend you actively collect email addresses as part of the campaign objectives so that you can continue the dialogue with your potential customers over long periods of time. It costs virtually nothing to do so.

In Sum

According to Forbes contributor and best-selling author Shel Israel, Sacramento King’s Chairman Vivek Ranadivé, is driving a mandate he calls NBA 3.0 The concept involves the use of digital technologies to reach more fans and sponsors all over the world, particularly in Asia where basketball is growing exponentially in popularity. Ranadive sold the concept to the rest of the league’s ownership, evolving his vision into a global strategy.

If Ranadive’s fulfills his vision, the playing field will shift yet again in the next few years. And soon thereafter, other leagues and sports organizations will follow. Those marketers having to play catch up will find themselves either out of work or out of business. It’s critical marketers, athletes and agencies develop new playbooks to keep up.

I provide an insider's view of the modern business world based on my years of experience working as an executive and consultant within the Global 3000. I am the CEO for Fanatics Media, a Digital Marketing Agency, and the author of Socialized!